, 1887-03-26
The Sun crossing the LINE.
For Young Readers.I

"The line, as of course you know, ID a
familiar name among sailors for the Equator,
that line, twenty five thousand miles IN length,
which runs all round this great ball on which
we live and divides it into two halves, call
ed the northern and the southern hemlspheres'
There is a story told of some school children,
not in Santa Cruz, who were asked what
they would do, if in roaming over the earth
they should arrive at the equatorial line,
how would they cross it? Some replied that
they would stop, others that they would Jump
over, and so on but of course you know
better, you know that there is no line to be
seen, no more than there is any axis to be
seen on which the earth turns or any poles
to be seen at the ends of the axis, which
we call the North and South Poles. 1t IS
true that an amusing paper published IN
London, called Punch, did once. ask what Sir
John Franklyn or some other Arctic explor-
or would do with the North Pole if he should
succeed in reaching it (Which you know,
has never been done), and the answer was
something like this, that he would bring 1t
home and set it up in London for the boys
to climb, after it had been we'll creased. But
this is one of Punch'S jokes. | daresay he
HIS made Jokes about the equatorial line also
sailors at any rate generally get some fun out
of crossing the line. When the ship IS pass
ing over the equator, which the captain can
tell them by his observation of the suns
position in the sky, they make it a day for
fun. Sometimes they stretch a rope across
the deck, which they shew to strangers who
may be on board as 1.-The line, More gener-
ally one Of them dresses himself as Nep-
tune, the god of the sea, and p%retends to
come on board the ship now that she IS to
enter the southern hemisphere. Neptune
generally has some assistants, and when q
young sailor who has never crossed the line
before is introduced to him, he has his chin
we'll lathered with some greasy mixture and
then scraped with a piece Of iron hoop, after
which the assistants souse him from head
to foot with water. Some such rough jokes
are always played on board of large ships
when they are crossing the line. But to-
day I wish to say something about the
sun crossing the line, which he does
twice every year. 1t is true that the
line which he crosses is the celestial
equator, the line in the sky which corresponds
with the terrestrial equator or earth's equator
and IS of course directly above it; but as far
as the effects of his light and heat are concern
81, he MY be sud to cross also the earth's
equator. You know that we have had our
cool season lately, this is because the sun
has been shining on the side of the equator
away from US, that is on the south side.
On Monday last he crossed the equator on
his way n~orthwards, and he will continue to
get a little more north day by day, till on the
2lst of June he will be a little more than a
quarter of the way towards the north pole,
then he will stop, turn back, and again cross
the line on the 23rd September. Thus you
see he will be six months north of the line,
that is on our side of it, and he will twice
pass over our heads here in Santa Cruz. The
first time will be at noon on the 18th
of May and the second time will be on the
of August. But what we are now
speaking of particularly is his crossing the
line, and this happened, as already said, on
Monday. Will you try to fancy yourself a long
way off from the earth, looking at it? Let us
suppose for instance that you went right up
from the earth about sunset and got to a dis
tance say of $4,000 miles. This sounds big,
but it is only a small distance, as distances
go among the heavenly bodies. It would
only be one tenth of the way towards the moon,
for instance, and a mere nothing out of the
distance towards the sun. Still it is a conve-
nient distance for US, since we can easily
take In the whole globe 5000 miles a~cross)
at one view. What would you see2 Well,
l think you would see some things that would
sstonish you very much. You would perhaps